More than three-quarters of the Labour MPs supported the Tory government yesterday in a bill reducing welfare payments. This makes the betrayal of the Labour Party almost complete. The 43 MPs who defied their whip include Jeremy Corbyn who surprisingly may have enough support to win the leadership of the party and reverse the rot but it looks now that the full weight of the establishment will be brought to bear on him.

When Irish Labour signed on with Fine Gael, there were perks and Mercs for the leaders and a sprinkling of quango payolas for the well-connected but British Labour are backing the Tories for free.

Tony Benn was never Labour leader; as for Attlee, he was a social-reformer but also a centrist:

He strongly supported the Cold War against Soviet Communism.

After Stalin took political control of most of Eastern Europe, and began to subvert other governments in the Balkans, Attlee's and Bevin's worst fears of Soviet intentions were realized. The Attlee Government then became instrumental in the creation of the successful NATO defence alliance to protect Western Europe against any Soviet aggression.[125] In a crucial contribution to the economic stability of post-war Europe, Attlee's Cabinet was instrumental in promoting the American Marshall Plan for the economic recovery of Europe.

A group of Labour MPs, organised under the banner of "Keep Left", urged the government to steer a middle way between the two emerging superpowers, and advocated the creation of a "third force" of European powers to stand between the US and USSR. However, deteriorating relations between Britain and the USSR, as well as Britain's economic reliance on America following the Marshall Plan, steered policy towards supporting the US.

I would say he hasn't a snowball's chance in Hell if he continues to reduce the Labour Party to another right-wing, conservative one. He has a chance of reorganising Labour into a party 'fearlessly on the side of the working class and hot to challenge every issue that confronts the weak and vulnerable in society'. If he can persuade even a small section of the 99% to fight back, then he, or rather they, can win.

The Irish Labour Party took the route of adopting their right-wing colleagues' policies in the hope of electability and the result was complete annihilation. This is presumably the fate that awaits British party if any of the other three candidates wins and continues the Torification of Labour.

The whole "the left can't win" is a Big Lie by the overwhelmingly right-wing corporatist media. We've seen what happens time and again in country after country when the centre-left heed the siren calls and bug-eyed ranting of the far right and "moderate" their position to "the centre" - in reality to positions that 20 years ago would have been seen as far right! The ostensibly centre-left party gets subsumed into the actual right-wing parties. Cos why vote for the plastic copy and wannabe, when you can vote for the real thing, when there's no real policy difference between them? The SNP just showed how a centre-left progressive party can win and win BIG against the combined forces of the right-wing parties and right-wing media.

It's been a 30 year process by the right-wing media of constantly dragging the centre of gravity ever further to the right over time, and the progressive/left keep falling for it. Today's Tories are far more dangerous than Thatcher's mob. Thatcher's mob were at least seen as radicals with strange new ideas. 30 years later the radical extremism of Thatcher's day is now painted as humdrum centrism or even as suspiciously lefty, and the Tory agenda has got even more radically unhinged...yet now we think of it as "normal". The media convince us that extreme ultra-far-right policies that would have been an unobtainable wet dream of the Monday Club fringe in Thatcher's day are now not only within grasp but being portrayed as "common sense".

You can't pander to WingNuts. You can't play nice with WingNuts. You can't be reasonable with a toxic ideology that wants to see the world burn. You can't have a rational debate with a murderous shower of thieving psychotics. There is no compromise possible with WingNuts. You have to take the bstards down before they do it to you. Confront them at every turn, reject their lies, expose their antics and corruptions, shine a light on their plans to make a wasteland of society. Fight fire with fire.

Holding hands in a circle singing Kumbaya, or snivelling up to the top table whimpering that maybe it'd be nice if the Master only gave the peasants 30 lashes each tonight, is just fncking Stupid when you are faced with a Government of rapacious amoral conscienceless Tory scumbags like this lot.

Brilliant piece on how the Blairites have facilitated the construction of a (false) WingNut Narrative that now dominates political discourse. It's time to fight back against this toxic and psychotic far-right ideology

It's been a 30 year process by the right-wing media of constantly dragging the centre of gravity ever further to the right over time, and the progressive/left keep falling for it. Today's Tories are far more dangerous than Thatcher's mob. Thatcher's mob were at least seen as radicals with strange new ideas. 30 years later the radical extremism of Thatcher's day is now painted as humdrum centrism or even as suspiciously lefty, and the Tory agenda has got even more radically unhinged...yet now we think of it as "normal". The media convince us that extreme ultra-far-right policies that would have been an unobtainable wet dream of the Monday Club fringe in Thatcher's day are now not only within grasp but being portrayed as "common sense".

The Monday Club were anti-immigrationistas and were actually a bit of a throwback even in Thatcher's day, though she threw them a morsel of raw meat every so often to keep them on board. I would have thought a better example of the kind of fringe you are thinking of was surely the likes of the Centre for Policy Studies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Policy_Studies

If the free market is the god, then ultimately anti-immigration and racist views are irrational and it is not surprising that such views are today very much on the fringes of UK Tories, who are mainly non-racist and non-homophobic. Rising Tory stars include the likes of Sajid Javid and Adam Afriyie. I don't disagree with your broader point, however, that today's lot are ultimately more extreme than the original Thatcherites.

Their influences are mainly American theorists like Grover Norquist - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/au..._norquist.html (though he personally fell somewhat out of favour in neo-con wingnut circles post-9/11 for being seen as too Arab-friendly. But that's a story for a different thread.)

And on the other side of the fence a perfect demonstration of why Kumbaya is moronic, why attempts to persuade the Master that whipping the peasants is preferable to impaling them are doomed to failure, why these people are an existential threat that needs to be stopped by any means necessary, and why the only rational response to WingNuttery is a shovel to the face: